Integrating Technology in the Classroom, Second Edition
Tools to Meet the Needs of Every Student
Boni Hamilton
AUDITORY/VERBAL LEARNERS prefer to learn through both sound and speech. Some people believe that auditory/verbal learners dislike writing; others believe that writing is a form of speech, and auditory learners mentally say the words they are writing. In the VARK learning preferences model, writing is considered part of the read/write learning preference. For the purposes of this book, auditory/verbal learning preferences will be treated as speech, sound, and writing. Students with a strong inclination for auditory learning represent less than one-third of students in a classroom, yet the majority of classroom instruction is delivered in an auditory/verbal mode. Use of digital technologies generally decreases the percentage of time given to the auditory/verbal mode, primarily because it increases the prevalence of visual stimuli. Interestingly, most technology tools and uses either do not access auditory stimuli or combine it with visual stimuli in multimedia work. However, students can use auditory and verbal tools to demonstrate their understanding of content materials. The following examples capitalize on students’ auditory/verbal strengths, although some may combine the auditory/verbal mode with other learning reference modes.
Listening
In the United States, students spend about 50% of every class period listening (Beall et al., 2008, International Journal of Listening). It’s no wonder that listening is a critical literacy skill addressed in educational standards. Good listening leads to academic success. The listening activities listed here can help young students practice listening skills.
The Exploratorium (exploratorium.edu/listen/lg_intro.php) has listening activities as well as listening guides, which are videos of ways and reasons people listen to their environments.
The videos introduce a naturalist who listens to the sounds of nature, a blind man who navigates by sound, a musician who creates instruments, an auto mechanic who listens to solve problems, and a deaf man who uses a cochlear implant for listening so that he can hear and communicate.
The Utah Education Network (UEN) lists 10 listening activities for K–2 students on its Listening Page (uen.org/k-2interactives/listening.shtml). These activities are useful for classroom centers. Most require Flash.MED-EL, a cochlear implant company, has Interactive Listening Games (medel.com/us/soundscape) designed to help implanted patients of all ages practice their listening skills. Teachers can access these activities as well. For instance, in Telling Tales (ages 10 and up), children listen to 13 different tales in three difficulty levels and answer questions after each story.
Podcasts for Listening
Podcasts can be a way to reinforce listening and content lessons. Keep in mind that, just as I have to watch a video more than once to absorb the information, students with weak auditory skills may need more than one exposure to podcasts. In fact, it might be helpful to ask students to listen first just to get the general message and then, if necessary for mastering the content, to take notes as they listen a second time. Or make the podcast available for listening at home as well.
Eleanor Amplified (tiny.cc/i2yawy) is a free weekly radio adventure series broadcasted by WHYY in Philadelphia. The series started in June 2016 and episodes can be downloaded through iTunes.
Second grader Nate Butkus hosts The Show About Science (soundcloud.com/the-showabout-science), where his guests explore science research and discovery.
Brains On (brainson.org) is an audio show for kids to answer questions kids submit about history and science. Podcasts are about 25 minutes long. The host Molly Bloom cohosts with children for each episode.
The Australian Broadcast Company produces Short & Curly (abc.net.au/radio/programs/shortandcurly), an ethics podcast for kids and their parents.
Episodes are 20–30 minutes long and pose questions about fairness, friendship, animals, and situations. The podcasts have silly moments as well. The podcast “Is your classroom fair?” seems appropriate for later elementary or middle school students. The podcast has natural breaks for discussion.
Book Club for Kids (bookclubforkids.org) podcasts are 20 minutes and best for students 9–13 years old. Each podcast features a different group of kids discussing a book, a celebrity reader, and an interview with the author.
Tumble (sciencepodcastforkids.com) is a science podcast for kids. The hosts are a science journalist and a teacher. Podcasts can be downloaded from iTunes and Google Play or can be accessed online. Age range is about 6–12.
The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd (doctorfloyd.com) are good for secondary literature and history students. If you scroll to “Categories,” and then scroll through the list past the cast, you will find periods of history covered with podcasts.
Listenwise (listenwise.com) provides curated podcasts taken from NPR for secondary students. The 1000+ podcasts are sorted into four categories: Current Events (added daily), English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. The podcasts are high quality, authentic news and accompanied by free listening comprehension materials. Free accounts provide access to teaching resources, lesson collections, and all audio news stories. A premium plan is available for purchase, but the cost is not indicated on the site.
Freakonomics Radio (freakonomics.com/archive) records a weekly podcast on economics and the unusual side of topics. Each podcast is about an hour and is suitable for secondary students. Teachers may find specific topics that fit into their curriculum.
StarTalk (startalkradio.net) covers science and, as host astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it, “everything under the universe.” Guests include comedians, sport stars, scientists, and pop culture figures. The podcast has won Emmy Awards for Excellence and is best for secondary students or adults.
The Allusionist (theallusionist.org) is a podcast about language hosted by Australian Helen Zaltzman. As with other podcasts, the podcasts do contain advertising. Recently, the episodes have dealt with the loss of minority languages. Best for secondary.
Stuff You Missed in History Class (missedinhistory.com/podcasts) is sure to have an episode related to almost any secondary history topic. A general list of topics is available, although some podcasts cover years and centuries of topics. Each episode includes a bibliography.
This list of podcasts is not exhaustive. Check out Radiolab (wnycstudios.org/shows/radiolab), Criminal (thisiscriminal.com), Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History (revisionisthistory.com/seasons), This American Life (thisamericanlife.org), Youth Radio (youthradio.org), and This I Believe (npr.org/series/4538138/this-i-believe). Many more are available as well, so if none of the podcasts listed here meet your instructional needs, search on your topic and podcasts. This is one area of language arts skills often overlooked in schools.
Poetry for Listening
Auditory learners are likely to understand poetry more easily if they hear it. Secondary teachers who teach literature have a wide array of poems for students to enjoy. Many online resources for listening to poetry are available, including poems read by the poets themselves, actors, and winners of recitation contests.
Poetry Archive (poetryarchive.org) features poets reading their own poetry. Young students can go to the students’ page or the children’s archive to hear poets. Older students may prefer the search feature to find particular poets or poems. When a poem title is clicked, the poem comes up as an audio file and as text.
Poetry Out Loud (poetryoutloud.org) is the website of the National Recitation Contest. In addition to hearing poems, students can learn recitation tips and find poems to recite.
Open Culture (openculture.com/audio_books_poetry) has mostly classical and some contemporary poetry to stream or download.
Lit2Go (etc.usf.edu/lit2go/search/?q=poetry), sponsored by Florida’s Educational Technology Clearinghouse, is a free collection of stories and poems sorted by K–12 grade levels. Each piece of literature has a citation, abstract, word count, and playing time listed.
Files may be downloaded as MP3s or played online, with or without texts. Most stories and poems are tied to a reading strategy as well.
Library of Congress Web Guide for Poetry Audio Recordings: A Guide to Online Resources (loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetryaudio) is an aggregator of audio poetry sources, more than can be listed here. Well worth a visit!
Audio Stories
Auditory learners enjoy input from audio stories and books. In fact, many elementary classrooms have listening centers with books on tape. The computer station can become a listening center as well. Audio stories are available on many sites, and some, but not all, are downloadable to devices such as iPods. Some need to be streamed live. Unlike animated video books, streamed audio takes relatively little bandwidth, so streaming the stories does not slow down the network.
For elementary students, treat online audio similar to listening centers in the classroom.
Minimize the story screen and open a drawing program so students can draw a scene from the story as they listen. Or, students can write responses to the story in a word-processing or blog window. Pairing students to listen to and then discuss the stories also has value.
Sometimes the goal is simply to encourage students to enjoy stories! Online audio books listed here are mainly for elementary students; many stories are available through digital apps for Apple products.
Secondary students, particularly those who struggle with reading, may benefit from audio versions of the books being read for class. In my school research, a number of students borrowed play-aways from a library, accessed books through the subscription-based Learning Ally provided by their district, or downloaded audio versions they found online. Secondary students can access online books and poetry through Loyal Books (loyalbooks.com/genre/Teen_Young_adult) or their public library’s collection.
Unite for Literacy (uniteforliteracy.com) is a collection of free audio books for beginning readers. Books are audio supported although children must click on the speaker icon for each page.
Storynory (storynory.com) hosts more than 600 audio books of fairy tales, fables, classics, and original audio stories narrated by professional actors. The stories are aimed at 7- to 11- year-olds. Storynory sometimes sponsors story competitions and records the winners. Audio books can be downloaded through iTunes, accessed through an iPad app, or streamed online.
Online Audio Stories (onlineaudiostories.com/category/all_stories/audio_stories) has stories and their texts for listening and reading. Many poems are housed on this site. Auditory learners particularly enjoy the rhythms of poetry.
Robert Munsch (robertmunsch.com/books), beloved Canadian children’s author and poet, reads his books aloud and permits MP3 downloads of the stories. Consider pairing MP3 stories with print copies of the books for listen-and-read sets. Munsch has a dramatic storyteller’s voice. Most of his best-selling books, such as Love You Forever, are based on true stories. A strong advocate of literacy, Munsch believes that literacy begins in families, well before children attend school.
Light Up Your Brain (lightupyourbrain.com/stories) audio stories can be downloaded as zip files to put onto MP3 devices or can be listened to online. The texts for the stories are also on the site, so readers can follow along.
Not all fables listed at Aesop’s Fables (aesopfables.com) have audio, but those that do are marked with an audio speaker icon. Many curricula call for students to learn about fables, and all Aesop’s fables are presented on this site with texts. Recently, 127 fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen were added to the site.
Lit2Go (etc.usf.edu/lit2go) has a free collection of stories sorted by K–12 grade levels. Each piece of literature has a citation, abstract, word count, and playing time listed. Files may be downloaded as MP3s or played online, with or without texts.
Digital Book (digitalbook.io) is a search engine for free audiobooks and digital books. The search engine includes results from LibriVox, Gutenberg, and Open Library. Some advertising is embedded with the results.
The Blueford Series, a collection of young adult novels set in urban America, is available free as a series of audiobooks (bluford.org/audiobooks). Books have to be downloaded chapter by chapter, but these are teen favorites worth sharing.
Sync (audiobooksync.com) offers two free paired audio books for teens each week for 13 weeks each summer, a total of 26 books each year. Teens can download their own copies and keep the copies forever. Although books can be downloaded to mobile devices with OverDrive, saving the texts to a computer file makes sure they are permanently available.
Books must be downloaded in the weeks when they are available. Registering for email reminders ensures you’ll know when the new season begins. Although all titles are available in the United States, copyright restrictions sometimes limit which titles can be downloaded in other countries.
Writing
Students’ writing springs from their imaginations, based on original thinking or on what they have observed, heard, or read, which makes writing an excellent assessment of how students understand concepts. Teachers can find bookshelves of texts about teaching writing, so, even though I earned a doctorate with research on student writing, I will not cover the topic exhaustively here. A couple of topics bear mentioning, if only because they reflect the most common questions I am asked at seminars and workshops.
To Keyboard or Not
At the primary level, typing a simple sentence can take a child 30 minutes or more, so how can teachers balance the benefits of word processing with the barrier of typing? In some classrooms, students spend hours learning proper keyboarding. I am far more concerned about students’ ability to type with sufficient speed to express their thoughts than with the accuracy of finger placement. Yes, students need to be familiar with letter placement on keyboards. Yes, they will be able to type faster—eventually—if they learn touch typing. On the other hand, no one can tell from the final typed piece whether it was typed with ten fingers or two.
With more technology-based state assessments, students have had to gain some proficiency with keyboarding before third grade. Research that compares students’ writing by hand versus by keyboarding has demonstrated that, until children can type at least as fast as they handwrite, their compositions written by hand will be better quality and longer. Once typing and handwriting reach the same speed, teachers need not be concerned about the cognitive effect of typing on written compositions. Unfortunately, technology-based assessments take away students’ ability to choose the best mode for composing. Some students may be able to type well enough by third grade to keep up with their thoughts, but most will not.
Helpful Keyboarding Hints
In an undergraduate writing course I taught, most students did not use formal touch typing, and some had very strange typing practices. They adopted techniques that worked for them; primarily they learned to type by typing—emails, texts, and papers. With the increase of touchpads and small (phone) keypads, adult typing practices have changed. I’ve observed that many people use two-finger touch (one finger of each hand) to type on pad computers, thumbs to type on phone keyboards, and one finger on phone touchpads. Proper keyboarding finger placement may no longer be relevant in real life. Still, students need to get their texts onto computers so that they can read for sense and revise their texts. The following tips may be helpful:
• Unless a student’s handwriting is too irregular for even the student to read, require that students handwrite rough drafts. Composing at the keyboard requires students to split their cognitive power between finding the keys and maintaining the sense of the text. The focus on the keys will drain their ability to write clearly until they become competent typists.
• If you choose to teach keyboarding, have students practice in short bursts at a center in the classroom or as a prelude to a different lab activity. Many students, particularly young children, cannot maintain a focus on typing for longer than 10 minutes.
• Try an intense but very short typing course with authentic reasons to type.
• Encourage a “type fast, fix later” mentality. Turn off monitors if needed to keep students from constantly fixing typos. Editing can come later.
• Require students to use default fonts until all the words have been typed. As a reward for typing, let students make texts prettier by changing font types, colors, or sizes.
• Turn off spelling and grammar checks until students have finished their typing. The red and green underlines distract most students. (Sometimes they will develop creative solutions to rid themselves of red underlines. For instance, one second grader clicked on
“Add to dictionary” every time he got a red underline, which rendered the computer’s dictionary useless.)
• After the typing is done, reactivate the spelling checker. The grammar checker is rarely worth using—it makes as many errors as the students do.
• Use older student buddies to type. Intermediate students, or even middle- or high-school volunteers, can help the slowest typists.
• At the lowest grade levels where texts are short, consider having students record stories or paragraphs to be transcribed by a volunteer.
• Ask parents to support students’ typing skills at home by requiring students to practice for 5–10 minutes to earn television or computer game time. Students can use free online typing programs.
• If students have access to word processors at home, assign typing practice as homework.
• Typing is no longer an optional skill, so students with physical disabilities that hinder two-handed typing still should learn to manage a keyboard. I once had a student with missing fingers. We worked together to determine how the rest of the fingers would compensate. One-hand typing is also possible. For more information, visit this site: One Hand Typing (aboutonehandtyping.com/introduction.html).
Free Online Keyboarding Sites Give students a list of free keyboarding sites and a plan for their practice. To earn TV or video game time, they need to spend 5–10 minutes on a typing site. Offer an incentive if they track their improvement in a spreadsheet each time they use a site. After tracking progress for 20–30 sessions, they can graph the data (math reinforcement) and earn a reward. Rewards do not have to be big—students’ names and pictures on a “Typing Titan” poster; a 15-minute,
after-school computer break; or something else adapted to the school’s practices. Although many other free online keyboarding sites exist, the following list provides sufficient choices for any school.
Dance Mat Typing (bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr) looks more like a game than other sites, which makes it attractive to kids. Four levels of play teach keyboarding. The site begins with instructions, followed by the four learning sequences, information on healthy ergonomics when typing, and additional information on computing.
Sense-Lang (games.sense-lang.org) contains many attractive typing games that will engage students. Although tutorials are also available, students will prefer the games.
Super Hyper Spider Typer (hoodamath.com/games/superhyperspidertyper.html) also makes typing a game rather than serious business. And it’s such a tongue twister, too!
Learn2Type for schools (learn2type.com/schools/whatis.cfm) provides classroom management accounts so that teachers can track students’ time and improvement. This site is for serious keyboarding practice.
Because adults use email regularly, teachers may underestimate how much training young students need before they can be unleashed with email accounts, even in protected settings where they are emailing only one another within the classroom. I have, on multiple occasions, introduced email accounts to students. Never has the training been sufficient to keep everyone out of trouble! You can teach netiquette and web protocols, but students choose whether to follow the guidelines. For that reason, even at the high school level, teachers must monitor students as they work in Web 2.0 environments.
Teaching Channel has a video lesson on teaching email etiquette (teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-email-etiquette). Adapt the ideas to suit the students in your class.
Before students use email, even among their classmates, teach them about tone. The joking comments they say to close friends in person sound far different when reduced to text.
Readers cannot tell whether writers are joking or serious, ironic or direct. Discuss with students what the consequences of email nastiness or bullying will be—and then follow through. Because written words appear without the voice and facial cues that accompany spoken language, even emoticons may be misunderstood if the words themselves sound mean or sarcastic. This is particularly true when the two individuals using email have never met and email is their only conversational tool. Consider how often adults misunderstand one another when speaking, as well as in written text. Students have similar troubles, and for some, communicating clearly in writing can be a persistent problem. Have elementary and middle-school students brainstorm guidelines for email etiquette, and post the guidelines where students can consult them. Email services via school accounts often allow teachers to review messages before they are sent. Stress to students that emailing on a school account is a privilege, not a right.
Email Services
With so many schools migrating to G Suite by Google, many students will have protected email service in Gmail. By middle school, it is not unlikely that students will also have a non-school account. Be clear with students about when they must and must not use the school email service.
ePals (epals.com) offers free, teacher-monitored email accounts for students. Free email is available for individual teachers (with 30 student accounts), schools, or districts. Once registered, teachers can participate in a global community where they can develop collaborative partnerships with other ePals members from around the world. ePals addresses safety through language and content filters and staff moderation of sitewide galleries, blogs, and forums. This can be used to email outside the district parameters in elementary and middle-school classrooms.
Introducing Word Processing
Because the purpose of word processors is to process words, intuitively one would think that students should use word processors for inputting text. Reconsider. Word processors handle text well but can frustrate novice users if they want to add illustrations or captions. For instance, pictures sometimes jump to different locations on the page or land on top of text.
Textboxes can also exasperate novice users.
Presentation software (e.g., PowerPoint, Impress, Keynote, Google Slides) accomplishes the same tasks as word processors but with much less angst because the features work in more predictable ways. Teach young students to work in presentation software first. Students can write in text boxes and adjust the placement of words and pictures on the page to their satisfaction. No one can tell which program students used once their products are printed or turned into PDF documents. As students gain more proficiency with keyboarding, they can usually master word processors without difficulty.
Whether students use word processors or other programs that handle text, writing on computers does have a place in the elementary classroom. In fact, computers have revolutionized writing in some classrooms. Students with handwriting issues find typing easier and appreciate the professional look of the final product. Those who struggle with spelling, punctuation, and capitalization benefit from the automatic correction features. Most important, revisions are easier to accomplish on a computer than by hand.
One caveat for elementary teachers, though. In my research time in schools, I became aware of how the use of Google Classroom caused many elementary teachers to demand all assignments be keyboarded. Students’ ability to compose on-screen differs significantly across a classroom. Those students who are weak at keyboarding will lose some cognitive attention to the content in order to type correctly. Also, the differences in keyboarding skills mean some students are very slow to finish their work. Often these are the same children who struggle with reading and writing anyway, so now they are doubly disadvantaged. Teachers need to pay attention to how the tools in use in the classroom affect students’ experiences with academic success.
Ideas for Writing
The following ideas emphasize word processing as a skill, not the use of a particular word processing program. The suggestions discuss writing only. Additions of graphic elements or integration of the text into a more visual mode may supplement the writing, but these options are not discussed here. Feel free to experiment with equipment and programs—and with online word processing applications.
Individual Text
Students regularly produce texts in all content areas in the classroom, and any writing can be typed. Elementary students should type from rough or corrected drafts. Ideally, teachers will ask students to revise once the text is typed. For the final draft, students may add visual elements and font effects to make the presentation more pleasing.
Researchers have documented how often students at all levels lose productive work time when they are start their work by engaging in non-essential tasks such as changing font styles, colors, and sizes. Set an expectation that all fonts will remain in default mode until the writing is completed.
Poetry Writing
Auditory/verbal students love to listen to the rhythms of poetry, compose their own poems, and share by reading them to others. After listening to children’s poems online (see Poetry for Listening earlier in this chapter), students can write their own.
Although the best poetry forms website is now inactive, students can learn about the different types of poetry and see examples at Poetry Soup (poetrysoup.com).
Reading Support
Whooo’s Reading (whooosreading.org) promotes reading comprehension through writing. The free basic plan allows teachers to register up to 10 classes. Students read anything that interests them, then answer three higher-level thinking questions. The quizzes are automatically scored, so the teacher has evidence of students’ comprehension. Additional features are available for subscribers.
Journals
Writing teachers often encourage students to keep personal journals or require students to write daily in a writing journal. If the writer is permitted to keep the journal private, teachers may suggest a free online journal. Penzu (penzu.com) would be appropriate for any students because it offers a separate registration for students under age 13 (penzu.com/account/u13_signup).
Content Reports
Students struggle to learn how to write reports for content classes. CAST Science Writer (tiny.cc/zizawy) supports secondary students in writing up lab results. The tool provides scaffolds for the writing, revising, and editing processes, including providing sentence stems if needed. There’s even a journal mode for taking notes. Students can also have what they’ve written read back to them. The tool is free, although it does require registration.
Classroom Peer Interactive Text
Inviting other students to read and respond to text pushes writing up a level in complexity. Giving and accepting writing support does not come easily or naturally to students. Typically, peers give feedback about editing rather than suggesting revisions, and many writers resist suggestions for improving their own texts.
Writing, more than any other academic task, ties into the emotional sense of self. Hearing criticism of our writing feels like criticism of who we are. Teachers and students should talk frankly about this pitfall so students can begin to disengage from emotional responses. Also, students need to understand the differences between writers and readers. The writer’s intent may be clear to the writer, but the reader does not always pick it up. This is true for all writers (professional and amateur) everywhere. As a published author who submits her work to a critique group of other professional writers, I have never conveyed my intent perfectly on the first or even tenth draft! With any peer response, the reader’s feedback—pointing out places where the reader is not sure about the writer’s intent—should dominate. That is, students need to learn to accept and act on feedback so they can improve their writing skills.
Saying only, “This is really good” cheats the writer. The text may have excellent sections, and writers need to hear about those specifically. But saying only, “This is really good” neither identifies the good parts nor gives the writer room to grow. Even young children can learn to say, “As a reader, I wanted to know more about …” or “As a reader, I was confused when ….” Using “as a reader” to introduce suggestions may help writers recognize that what is clear in their heads isn’t always conveyed clearly to readers.
Until a piece of writing’s content and structure have been revised to satisfy readers, students should not waste time on editing. After all, why edit something that might change completely in a revision?
Global Peer Revision
Sometimes, after students begin to value the viewpoints of readers, teachers can expand the peer revision opportunities to global partners. This approach can be as structured as two teachers in distant schools assigning revision partners between their classes or as loosely as inserting text in a global student-only space, such as ePals (epals.com), and then opening it to public comment. Writing for an authentic audience will motivate students to do their best writing, so aim to get students’ writing out to a broader audience than just classmates. Before embarking on a wide network, though, be certain your students know about netiquette and online safety.
Writing for Audience Comment
Students may write to solicit feedback about their ideas. Solicited feedback generally has the purpose of furthering the conversation about content and not necessarily improving a student’s writing skills. A common form of audience comment would be a blog.
Blogging
Teachers are often frustrated when students’ blogs lack substance. Sometimes the problem is that students are asked to blog about something about which they have nothing to say, but more often the problem is that blogging skills have not been explicitly taught, even though blogging is a specific genre of writing. By this, I’m not referring to netiquette, although using proper manners online is important.
Blogging should be taught as a genre with identifiable characteristics. The essence of blogging is writing thoughtfully about topics on which the blogger offers personal insights, opinions, arguments, and new ideas. A blog is an individual’s ongoing, chronological website of his or her own informed opinions and reflections. If a person’s blog post on a particular day does not give readers something to think and talk about, then it will not start a conversation—triggering a conversation (i.e., comments from readers) is the goal of blogging. Because blogging attempts to initiate conversations, responses to a blog post should have the same characteristics as the original post: Responses must add pieces of new information—in the forms of questions, reactions, insights, experiences, or challenges—that give subsequent readers more reasons to respond. Research on online communities indicates that when responses simply praise or agree, the conversation stops. Learning to write good blog responses/comments will have beneficial effects on oral class discussions because the same techniques apply.
Blogs
Blogs may be useful for publishing writing or projects, discussing books, reporting on class activities, and offering opinions on teacher-generated questions. Examples of 10 great class blogs from around the world can be accessed on the Edublogger site (tiny.cc/xkzawy).
Elementary Blogging
Though blogs may seem like a secondary education tool, elementary students can benefit from becoming bloggers once they understand the purpose and process of blogging. The point of blogging is to produce enough content so that others can comment and, in ideal situations, enter into conversations about interesting topics. Also, bloggers generally write on a regular schedule so that the people who follow the blog have reasons to visit often.
Teachers need to remind students that, like email messages, blogs cover appropriate topics only. When they comment on others’ blogs, their comments should be thoughtful and polite.
Hold a discussion on how important it is to disagree with others’ opinions in a kind way. Remind them to follow basic safety guidelines about protecting their identities as well.
A site to explore to see samples of students’ blogs and peers’ comments is Comments4Kids (comments4kids.blogspot.com). Participants list their class blogs and invite students to comment to student authors about what is posted. It’s an excellent plan for connecting student bloggers. After you and your students study this site, you may decide to invite comments on your students’ blogs. On the home page of Comments4Kids, click on “How to Compose a Quality Comment” for videos of students’ suggestions.
Because elementary students tend to write short sentences and paragraphs, teachers need to encourage children to use lots of details and examples in their blogs. When students are learning to blog, allow plenty of class time, because typing a blog post can take primary students a l-o-n-g time. Before typing, students can write on paper a few key words about their main ideas and examples. As they type, more ideas will come to mind and can be added.
After they type the blog posts, they can add a few more details to make it more convincing. Blogs do not need to be perfect. Expect students to write at their current levels. This means some students may misspell words, make mechanical mistakes, or write incomplete sentences. If teachers insist on correcting every error, students will resist writing in blogs, and teachers will go crazy managing the load. Encourage enough revision so that the content is readable and enough editing so that gross errors can be cleaned up. Students can edit each other’s blogs for these basic types of errors. Not all students will enjoy blogging at first, but after they receive comments from other students on their blogs, they will become more enthusiastic.
Student blogs should be set up so that each student has a blog page in a class blog site. Students maintain their own pages. Teachers can decide how directive they will be about the blogs. In some schools, students write their posts on word processors during center times, have posts approved by their teachers, and then copy and paste them into their blogs. In other classrooms, students write their blog posts in response to writing prompts or as reading responses. Some teachers rotate students through classroom computers to post blogs; others pull in laptops or use lab time for the posts. One teacher asks students to write their blogs as though they were writing diaries.
Although for adults commenting on blogs is optional, on elementary blogging sites, comments need to be mandatory. Require students to respond to two other blogs as goodwill measures. Everyone likes audience response, so reading comments on their work will delight students. In addition, learning to make meaningful comments conditions students to think about their peers and themselves as writers. It’s easy to practice commenting as a whole class, especially if you access blogs of students in other classrooms and write responses to their posts.
Students are tempted to write something nice but empty, like “Cool!” When they talk about various comments as a class, students quickly see that a message that responds to the content of the blog post—such as “It’s interesting that …” or “I wonder …” or “A question I had was …”—opens a conversation with the blogger. Some bloggers respond to responses, and others do not. A blogger is not obligated to respond to every comment.
For more suggestions on how to make blogging successful in your classroom, read an article by teacher Pernille Ripp: tiny.cc/r25cwy.
Elementary Blogging Resources
Before introducing blogging, teachers should check with the IT department to learn whether blogging is considered acceptable use for the elementary school and whether the district has its own blogging tool, such as Blogger as part of G Suite. If not, the following might work well for elementary teachers.
Weebly for Education (education.weebly.com) offers a free class website for up to 40 students. The environment is managed, protected, and advertisement free. Students can create blogs as separate entities or as part of their own websites.
Edublogs (edublogs.org) hosts only education blogs. Teachers can have a class account for up to 50 student blogs. The site design is clean and attractive.
Kidblog (kidblog.org) charges a fee for everyone, which makes it less appealing than the free blogging sites. In Kidblog, students do not need passwords because they log in using a class registration code and choose their names from class lists. Blogs are private by default and can be semiprivate (visible only to parents).
KidzBlog (kidzblog.en.softonic.com) is free, downloadable software geared for early elementary students and useable in Windows. Children can draw in the blog as well as type.
The software can be hosted on a school server and kept private.
Seesaw (web.seesaw.me) offers a free, complete portfolio platform, including blogging, for teachers to use with up to 10 active classes. Paid subscriptions unlock additional features, but the free version is robust.
Secondary Blogging
Blogging will work better with middle schoolers if teachers frontload the skills, as is described in this blog posting by teacher/author Heather Wolpert-Gawron: tiny.cc/755cwy.
High-school teachers probably don’t need to step students through the process in such a detailed way. Secondary students should be aware, though, that if their blogs are publicly visible, they may be discoverable by college representatives, potential employers, and others.
What gets posted needs to be of high quality.
Secondary Blogging Resources
WordPress (wordpress.com) may be the most popular blogging site for secondary students.
Students must be 13 or older in the US, and 16 or older in the European Union (EU), to register for a blog or website. The site is highly intuitive and flexible. It has a variety of plugins for customizing your blog or website.
Weebly (weebly.com) can be used by individuals 13 and older, and some secondary teachers may choose that option in order to give students full freedom. However, free Weebly accounts have advertising embedded, so Weebly for Education (education.weebly.com) may be a more palatable option. Both are free.
Tumblr (tumblr.com) offers social blogging for individuals over 13 years of age in the United States and over 16 in the EU. The site is a powerful platform that would allow secondary students to have a wide audience. Because these blogs cannot be set up as class blogs, teachers would either need to follow each student or have a particular tag on schoolrelated work so the teacher could see what is relevant for class.
Blogger can be turned on by a district using G Suite tools to provide blogging. Check with the district G Suite administrator to see if it is available for your students.
Collaborative Writing
Often in business, colleagues collaborate on writing projects. Students can also collaborate as writers. Teachers handle the collaborative process in different ways, depending on the goals of the project, design of the collaborative space, and access to technology tools. For instance, many school districts have created district-specific domains through Google Apps for Education (G Suite), so that each student has an account and email within the confines of the district’s filtering system. Because Google Docs permits multiple authors on one document, students can work in groups on a single text. Be aware that students may not wait for permission to collaborate. One third-grade teacher discovered that her students were sharing their documents and soliciting feedback and collaboration weeks before she had planned to introduce the collaborative features of Google Docs. A fourth-grade teacher talked about how her students carried their laptops to peers’ desks so that they could ask for feedback on their writing. She eventually migrated their writing to Google Docs to make the collaborations easier.
Edmodo (edmodo.com) and Schoology (schoology.com/k-12) are learning management systems. Using these platforms, teachers can create groups of students, give each group different questions for their blog or collaborative space, and keep track of all students’ work.
Through these networks, teachers can communicate with other teachers worldwide and discover new resources.
Wikis
Wikis also offer the option of collaboration on texts. Wikis (adapted from the Hawaiian phrase “wiki-wiki,” meaning “quick-quick”) have wonderful potential but have lost their cachet among many teachers because favorite free wiki hosts have closed their services. But wikis are still viable options for teachers.
Unlike blogs, where one contributor writes and invites multiple commenters, on a wiki members work collaboratively to create shared content that reflects the work of all contributors.
Teachers have two options for wikis: a teacher/school wiki, which is generally a communication tool for parents, or a class wiki on which every child has a page for his or her work. I encourage both in every classroom.
Teacher/School Wikis
A fifth-grade-level team created an informational wiki for parents and students. Each homeroom class had its own wiki page, where students and parents could find the daily homework assignments. Because the fifth-grade teachers mixed their students for content instruction, being able to access all homework assignments for all teachers in all content areas helped parents stay informed about expectations. On a general page, the fifth-grade teachers posted details about class events, copies of permission slips, and requests for volunteers.
Similarly, a first-grade teacher created a teacher wiki resource to answer common questions from parents of first graders. This wiki had individual pages devoted to academic topics (e.g., supporting your child as a reader and writer), parenting topics (e.g., advice about bedtimes, television, and computer use at home) and social topics (e.g., advice for students’ problems, such as bullying, not wanting to come to school, and not understanding assignments).
A school office and the parent-teacher organization combined to maintain an informational wiki for school families. All school forms, policies, newsletters, requests for volunteers, announcements, and celebrations were uploaded to cut down on the amount of paper sent home with students. The wiki was set up so that selected members of the school staff and parent community could edit the information as needed.
Class Wikis
A class wiki can serve both teachers and students. Some pages can be designated teacheronly for communicating with parents. In addition, each student or team (for collaborative work) can have an individual page for posting works in progress, completed projects, links to a blog, or other materials the students want to access outside school. Students’ pages can be kept private for only classmates or made public to invite comments and collaboration outside the classroom walls.
Wikis can be edited easily, can use track changes so that the owner can revert to a previous version, and can be worked on by several students at once, as long as they are working on different pages. The tracking feature is particularly helpful for a class wiki. Students, especially at fourth grade and up, sometimes consider it a prank to delete another student’s work or to write inappropriate comments on a peer’s page. The history tab identifies who made the change and when. Students should be held accountable for their actions as part of netiquette. After inappropriate comments are deleted, pages are restored to their original status. One student removed all the web links her teacher had assigned for homework. The teacher was able to restore the links quickly and then show the student and her parents the evidence of the disruptive behavior. Another student embedded swear words in an essay on a classmate’s wiki. The teacher caught the change, restored the page to its original content, and implemented consequences for the misbehaving student, all before anyone else knew about it.
Free Wikis for Teachers
Creating a wiki remains one of the best free options for teachers. Several wiki hosts reverse the strategy of other education domains: Wiki hosts offer free wikis to educators and charge the business world and general public. So, although a teacher can choose to pay for expanded wiki services, subscriptions are unnecessary for most wiki users. I have created educational wikis for more than 10 years and have experienced no problems with any of them.
Wikidot in Education (wikidot.com/education) offers free wiki accounts to teachers and researchers. Teachers need to build their sites first, then go to the Site Manager and look for the Educational upgrade. The educational site provides extra features typically found in the professional version and does not embed advertising.
PBworks Basic Edition for Education (pbworks.com) encourages teachers to create a workspace and add up to one hundred students and parents to work within the space. Free accounts have 2 GB of upload storage and limited protection for pages or folders. Teachers can pay to upgrade for more features.
Uses for Wikis
Setting up a wiki is just the first step. Teachers need to think about how wikis might be integrated into their classrooms for collaborative or individual projects. Collaborative Projects. Students can write books in wikis about curricular topics. For example, elementary students in primary classrooms often are supposed to learn local history, but local history materials are written at too high a reading level. Older students can create ABC wiki books to teach local history. Each page of the wiki could be an alphabet letter where students contribute their ideas, or students could combine all the alphabet letters on one page of a wiki. The wiki would not be printed but accessed online. Wiki books can cover any content area. Consider habitat guides with pictures of animals and plants within a habitat and other notable information. Other book topics could be outer space, the Civil War, math in everyday life, or reading guides to novels. Students could make glossaries of content terms, contribute to building background knowledge in a new unit, or build a list of the top 100 books for reading at their grade level. Whatever the topic for a collaborative wiki, students need to organize the materials they collect so that the wiki is usable, which places such a project high on Bloom’s taxonomy.
Individual Work. Students can upload works in progress to invite comments and suggestions for improvement. They can also showcase their finished work. Students who want to share their passion for a sport or skill may create original materials that others can read and view. Students could each choose a hero and dedicate a page to information, photos, and direct quotations. Students’ wikis can serve many different purposes: as a note catcher, an area for test review, or space for expressing creativity. With any online web presence, unless the content changes often, parents and students will not be inclined to visit.
Songwriting
Although songwriting is another form of writing, in the same way that poetry and graphic novels are, not many students have chances to write and perform songs.
In a fourth-grade class, students read a plantation song that was presented in their text as a poem. The plantation song represented two viewpoints in different stanzas, one stanza from the slaveholder’s point of view and the other from the slave’s point of view, with a chorus that could be interpreted differently if it were sung by the slaveholder or the slave.
Students emulated the plantation song when they wrote two-stanza songs from the viewpoints of a teacher and a student, with a chorus that either teacher or student could sing.
They then recorded the songs to share with classmates.
Analyzing the characteristics of the original song, developing their songs to convey their conceptions of a teacher’s and a student’s viewpoints, and then writing a chorus that could be sung by either teacher or student required students to work at the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. They considered it fun.
Secondary students often enjoy creating music or setting their poetry to tunes. Teachers may make this an option as a final product for a research project.
Authoring Books
One of the first writing purposes I saw in schools was writing books. Students revised and illustrated something they had written—fiction or nonfiction—and then went to the publishing lab to have the book compiled and laminated. Volunteers spent hours putting the students’ books together back then.
With technology tools, students can combine their texts and illustrations to create books without the intervention of volunteers. Options vary. Students can arrange their texts and illustrations on slides in presentation software (oriented either as portrait or landscape), can print two-sided pages, and can bind the pages together. Or, they can use desktop publishing software, if it’s available. Desktop publishing programs work differently, so teachers need to be familiar with the software’s functions. Some online book publishers provide tools for assembling books online for generating ebooks or hard copies of books. These publishers operate on a fee-for-services basis.
The number of resources for creating online books feels overwhelming because so many target adults who write for children rather than student writers. Many of these sites could be used with secondary students; however, with elementary students, the goal is to find resources that have child-friendly tools and are easily navigated. The following resources suit different needs. Explore them to find the one that works best for your classroom.
Book Creator (bookcreator.com) is designed for use in Chrome or on iPads to combine text, images, audio, and video in digital stories. Links on the website open many teacher resources as well. Teachers can register for a free library and invite students to create up to 40 books for the library. When a library is no longer needed, books can be archived to allow more books to be created. Paid subscriptions simply allow more libraries and more books. Book Creator is also available for Windows 8 or higher (tiny.cc/sg6cwy).
Flipsnack Edu (flipsnackedu.com) offers a free class license intended for testing the product before buying. Teachers can have only 10 student accounts and storage space is limited, but the free version would work for testing the tool to determine its value and for collaborative work among small groups of students.
TikaTok (tikatok.com/starters/details/title/blank-book), now owned by Pearson, offers a lowcost basic subscription with limited options for making books or more expensive plans.
Geared to Grades 1–6.
My StoryMaker (carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker) is housed within the Carnegie Library website. The site is designed for primary students and language learners. It provides limited characters, scenery, and objects and helps students when they seem stuck. The final story can be published as a PDF to share with others. Students get a story number to access their story online. However, stories are deleted after one month, so students should also save a PDF version to print or share.
StoryJumper (storyjumper.com/main/classroom) has a classroom edition that enables students to write and illustrate books. Teachers sign up their classes under a teacher account and set a time limit for each use. Parents can sign up for a free home interface with the school version. Parents can see students’ work, and the final books can be uploaded or purchased at a special education rate (minimum of 15 books total). The StoryStarter workbook offers seven excellent steps for teaching students how to create interesting, detailed stories, which is a helpful teaching tool in itself.
Bookemon for Educators (bookemon.com/edcenter-home) provides private space for K–12 and college members (teachers, administrators, and staff members) to add students’ accounts to their own accounts for monitoring students’ work. To preview a book, you can download a PDF version of the book to a computer, but the PDF will not be printable from your computer. Once the books are edited and sent to be published, they cannot be changed.
Publication is online (you can set privacy levels) with options to purchase printed copies. Studentreasures (studentreasures.com) has online or handwritten options for publishing students’ books. Students in all grades can publish class books, and students in Grades 4 and above can publish individual books. This process works best if the books are written and illustrations finished before starting the online process. Details about publishing options can be found in the FAQs.
ReadWriteThink (readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/flipbook) has a flipbook generator. Flipbooks are multipage books that are folded at the top. If you make one yourself first, teaching students how it works should go smoothly. These books cannot be saved, so they must be printed when completed. Drawing tools are available on this interactive tool. To save time, have students type their texts in a word processor so they can copy and paste them into the flipbook. Users must know in advance exactly how many pages they want to create.
Writing for Publication
Audiences for students’ writing should be more than the classroom teacher. When the work is posted online, students can direct family members and friends to view their work, even when the students’ names are not used. Writing for an audience motivates students to take extra care. Students can also submit their work for publication online. Sometimes students’ work needs to be targeted to a particular topic or style, and at other times they can submit their best work on any topic in any style. You can access an excellent list of publication outlets for teens provided by the magazine Stone Soup (stonesoup.com/where-to-publish-writing-bykids).
Online writing is generally more suited for students in late elementary through secondary school than for those in the primary grades. Each of the following sites indicates the age or grade ranges of the student authors targeted for publication.
My Hero (myhero.com) invites people of all ages to write, share art, or make movies about their heroes and submit them to the website. Registration is required, but the site and tools are free. Teachers have an organizer page where they can collect students’ stories.
Cyberkids (cyberkids.com/he/html/submit.html) publishes work for and by kids ages 7–12. Creative works that include illustrations are more likely to be chosen than non-illustrated works.
Stone Soup (stonesoup.com) publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art from children ages 8–13 in its online magazine. Submission guidelines are shared on the website. Stone Soup’s editors prefer short-short stories and poems in free verse. To read past issues of the magazine, which is published six times a year, go to the archive (stonesoup.com/archives).
Amazing Kids! (mag.amazing-kids.org/get-involved/write-for-us), an online magazine for kids by kids, invites manuscripts from students ages 5–18. Even if students do not write for this magazine, they may enjoy reading what others have written. This magazine accepts fiction; nonfiction, including tech, adventure, and cultural articles and kid-friendly recipes; poetry; jokes and riddles; art/photography; reviews; and videos.
Launch Pad (launchpadmag.com/write) encourages writers and illustrators ages 6–14 to submit materials via email for possible publication in its online magazine. Before submitting work, students need to check out the site’s guidelines plus writing and art tips.
Magic Dragon (magicdragonmagazine.com) is a full-color, quarterly print magazine that publishes stories, poetry, and artwork from elementary school students. The site also contains Write It! Activities and How To! Activities.KidLit (kid-lit.net) was designed to publish stories, poetry, and book reviews by kids. The website started in 2016 and welcomes submissions.
Audio Recorders
Digital recorders enable students to talk and listen. Teachers can use any of the following equipment for acquiring audio files: digital recorders, MP3 players (including iPods), tablets, phones, and computers. Each has strengths and weaknesses.
Digital recorders cost $40 or more, are highly portable, and have the fewest buttons to master. Today’s recorders hold 15–20 hours of sound files, which can be transferred quickly to a computer via a USB connection. Because of their ease of use, digital recorders may be the best equipment for capturing interviews, nature sounds, or other sound files that require leaving the classroom. Unlike other digital recording tools, recorders work exclusively with sound, so they are single-purpose tools. Students can record and listen to what they record.
Place the recorders on surfaces when recording, or they will pick up noises from being handled. Many digital recorders accommodate an external microphone, and all have headphone jacks for private listening.
I use the term MP3 to describe players that range from inexpensive audio-only devices to higher-priced multimedia devices, such as the iPod Touch. Some 4G and 8G players handle multimedia (sound, video, music, and audiobooks) and still cost under $50. In research of fourth through sixth graders, I learned iPod Touch devices are still being used in some schools and were popular with elementary students at home. A distinct advantage of multimedia MP3 players is the ability to load video and music as well as audio books and live sounds.
Generally, microphones are built-in, and MP3 players come with earbuds. However, some more expensive MP3 players require the purchase of a separate recording device. If you plan to use the MP3 player for audiobooks, realize that not all MP3 players handle books in the same way. Some will remember where an audio book was stopped; others start the book from the beginning every time. Research any player you consider buying so you get the best product for the uses you intend. One MP3 player I purchased recently does not handle any files with digital rights management (such as the books I borrow from the public library), and nothing on the package alerted me to this limitation.
Tablets often have built-in microphones and cameras. iPads are more audio and video friendly than Chromebooks. But both devices can be used to create or download and play audio files. For audio, it is easier to use the tablet devices in a classroom than carry it around for outdoor work or interviews.
Mobile phones have become popular for audio and video. At the secondary level, students may own phones and choose to use them for audio, particularly if they are recording interviews.
Most computers come with built-in microphones and may have cameras as well. In that case, students can record themselves directly at the computer. In a classroom where many students record at once, invest in headsets that include earphones and microphones. When using headsets, students need to experiment with positioning the microphone for the best sound.
Sensitive microphones catch every breath; others sound muffled or exaggerate sibilants if they are too close.
Headset costs range widely. Pay attention to whether you need the dual 3.5-mm plugs or a USB connection for the headsets because the connection type affects the price. If a microphone is built into the computer, software to handle the audio input will also be built in; if you add a headset, you may need to download audio recording and editing software. The most commonly used free software is Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net/download), which has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. A manual for Audacity is on its site, and many Audacity tutorials can be found on YouTube.
Student Uses for Audio Recorders
Although audio files can be included in numerous multimedia projects, students can also use digital recorders to generate audio-only projects, such as these:
Story Reading
Enlisting students to record stories or books for younger students builds the older students’ confidence and gives them practice reading aloud. Reading stories for younger students particularly helps striving readers or students learning English to build their reading and fluency skills. A good recording requires the reader to practice so that he or she can read fluently without stumbling. The teachers of younger students can store these audio files on a computer to transfer to devices, so that their students can listen at home or at listening centers.
Storytelling
Reluctant writers may profit from talking through their stories before they attempt to write them. With digital recorders, they can record themselves as they tell their stories, listen critically, and then either re-record or begin to write.
For primary students, teachers can ask students to record their stories as a prewriting or writing activity. If the recording is used as a prewriting tool, students can record their stories, listen critically to determine whether they want to add details, and then write. Students who are not yet writing can still “write” stories by recording themselves. Their stories can be typed by volunteers and illustrated by the students. The beauty of having digital recordings is that the volunteer does not have to be present; the audio file can be emailed to the volunteer for transcription, which allows working parents to get involved with volunteerism. As primary students’ stories are typically short, transcribing does not require much time.
Listening for Revision
Another way to avoid the editing-only feedback from other students while helping writers pay attention to their texts is to have writers record their writing for peer responses. For writers, reading stories and essays aloud sometimes reveals flaws in logic, sentence structure, or content. Based on my school research, having writers listen to their own read-alouds increases the likelihood that they will catch errors in logic or omissions. When peers listen to audio files of stories or essays for critique, they are not distracted by mechanical errors and can focus on where stories become confusing or lack details. If you plan to ask peers to listen for critique purposes, provide a critique page with sentence stems: As a reader, I was interested when …. As a reader, I was confused when …. As a reader, I had questions about ….. As a reader, I suggest ….
Interviewing
Students can interview family members or community residents about local history, national historic events, childhood memories, or traditions. If residents have traveled, they may talk about places they’ve seen and traditions they experienced. Elected officials can talk about local issues, or individuals can talk about their careers or hobbies. When audio clips are combined with photographs, students can create stories that require less expertise than videos. The creativity required for this project extends it to the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy.
Podcasts
Podcasts can inform parents about the week’s activities in a classroom, teach concepts, capture students’ opinions, deliver creative writing, share songs or raps, or resemble radio shows. Some student teams create podcasts that sound like broadcasts from their school and include interviews, grade level news, student-created jingles, and reminders about activities at the school. Good podcasts require writing a script and practicing before recording.
Podcasts can be hosted on a school or district website or uploaded to iTunes.
Teacher Uses of Digital Audio Recorders
While students will find many uses for recorders in their work, teachers can benefit from using recorders as well. An important instructional use for recorders occurs during reading assessments. Teachers can record students’ reading assessments for multiple purposes. First, novices in administering reading assessments can check their original notes against the recordings or can use the recordings to practice running records. A first-year third-grade teacher reported that knowing she had recordings relieved the stress of assessing her readers, while she built her skills in administering an individualized reading inventory.
Because her students expressed curiosity about the recordings, she allowed them to listen to themselves—and discovered additional purposes for the recordings. The students compared what they had read into the recorder with the original text. They not only caught decoding mistakes, but also recognized when they were not reading fluently. Students became more purposeful in attending to their oral reading, and some students asked to record subsequent readings to determine whether they had improved. These digital recordings became portfolios to document students’ improvements. The teacher could email the files to parents, play them at parent-teacher conferences, and have students listen to the files to see how much their reading had improved. By having access to the digital recordings, students felt empowered as monitors of their reading growth.
A speech and language teacher used digital recordings of her students to document their improvements in producing problematic speech sounds. Like the third-grade teacher, she found that students valued and gained confidence from auditory evidence that their speech was improving in clarity.
Audio files might include the reading assessment, a student’s storytelling performance, or podcasts of books. A kindergarten teacher asked upper-grade students to create podcasts of books her students would read in guided reading. She loaded the stories onto MP3 players and sent the books and players home with struggling readers and English language learners (ELLs). They and their parents listened to the stories and followed along in the books. Not only did having familiarity with the books improve students’ confidence the following day, but parents of the ELL students also acquired higher-level English skills. On the teacher’s computer, she has a collection of audio files to send home with students at any time.
Annually, she recruits new readers to increase her podcast collection.
Websites sometimes offer podcasts, and local libraries have downloadable audio files of books. Students who read below grade level can feel left out when their peers discuss books. Giving these students audio books of popular grade-level texts allows them to get excited about books and join the conversations.
Music files at the elementary level may include songs used in music classes for performances; ditties that review content (the alphabet, numbers, or science content, such as the water cycle); or classroom routine songs, such as cleanup time, that make chores more fun. Students enjoy listening to recordings of their classmates and themselves as well.
If teachers own music CDs and are using them for educational purposes, they can load the songs onto players for use with students without violating copyright. Use music recordings to enhance poetry or songwriting units, build background knowledge about a historical period, familiarize students with famous composers, or introduce a culture.
Even though classrooms are typically heavy with auditory stimuli, the auditory input supported by technology is important to all learners. Teachers should provide opportunities for all students to write on computers and word processors. In fact, some schools consider language arts the most effective entry point for students using computers in classrooms.
Audio recorders will interest auditory/verbal learners and probably also appeal to kinesthetic/tactile learners, so investing in one or more recorders can benefit many students in the classroom. Audio books, stories, and poetry can engage students who struggle to read grade-level materials and may help auditory learners’ reading comprehension.
Fifteen Fabulous Auditory Projects
1. Listen to a Book. Listen to a text as you read along.
2. Write. Produce stories, poetry, scripts, and nonfiction works.
3. Practice Fluency. Record yourself reading; listen to how you did.
4. Podcast. Podcast class news for parents.
5. Model Reading Skills. Create audio book files for younger students.
6. Interview. Listen to what community members know.
7. Skype an Author. Hear an author discuss his or her writing.
8. Blog. Write your own or comment on someone else’s blog.
9. Revel in Poetry. Listen to a poem or record one of your own.
10. Self-Critique. Listen to your own text for revision ideas.
11. Write a song. Perform it as you make a podcast.
12. Storytelling. Listen to storytellers or record your own story.
13. Peer Critique. Review a peer’s recorded text to suggest how the person can improve it.
14. Speak Up. Add audio features to a slideshow.
15. Video Conference. Engage with global partners through a video conferencing site.